Rope: CR #26

This past Christmas, I as a movie geek got so much awesome stuff, Lawrence of Arabia, The Avengers, and Adventure Time season 1 are just a few of the awesome stuff I received. The one that truly blew me away, mostly because I wan't expecting it, was the Alfred Hitchcock: Masterpiece Collection. A collection of 15 Hitchcock classics, yet it strangely doesn't have Strangers on a Train, or Rebecca. But how can I complain when it has just about everything else. So instead of seeing the big movie this week, I saw a Hitchcock movie that had the gimmick of being shot in one take. Is it truly a classic? Let's find out in my review of...

PLOT
Our film begins with Brandon and Phillip strangling another man to death and stuffing him in a chest in their apartment. The dead man was named David, and he was considered by these men to be inferior, so the murder is justified. To test just how perfect their murder is, they invite David's friends and family over for a party and make the chest he's buried in the centerpiece of the whole event. They also invite their old prep school headmaster, who starts to suspect something amiss when David doesn't show.




PROS
As I stated before, the film has the gimmick of being shot in one take. Now if you know anything about film making in the 40's, you know that this was impossible to do for an hour and a half film. So Hitchcock has very clever, if obvious, ways of hiding his limited cuts. Because of this, it never leaves the apartment, or even the chest, making it seem like a stage play.

One of my favorite Hitchcock quotes is "Always make the audience suffer as long as possible", and he does that in this movie for an hour and 20 minutes. Once David is inside the chest, the tension begins and never lets up. The camera never leaves the chest, even if it's not in the shot, and the tension keeps rising with the possibility of said body being found.

James Stewart plays the prep school headmaster, and as usual, nails it. He's just a cool guy who you'd have a lot of fun debating something with.

The last 10 minutes of the film is simply astounding. It's the tensest moment in the whole movie, and has an amazing speech by James Stewart. And it all ends with a chilling yet simple phrase.

The film brings up some interesting moral issues that it plays with throughout the whole thing. It's fun to see Hitchcock bring some deep issues into his films, and this one doesn't disappointing.

Something that really caught my attention was that the main characters are the villains, and they stay that way until James Stewart shows up halfway through the film. This leads to one of Hitchcock's greatest stables, making any situation, even if it involves the villains, tense. Whenever someone goes near the chest, you get scarred. Whether is for them being found out, or if you want them to be find out, it's tense.



CONS
The movie has a slow start. You are essentially watching a regal house party with people you know nothing about. It's quite boring at first, but while it does pick up 20-30 minutes later, it still does take it awhile to get there.




CONCLUSION
"Rope" well-deserves the title of classic. It has everything we love about Hitchcock, tension, artistic camera shots, crowd pleasing suspense, and much more. I loved this movie and will still be thinking about it long after the fact. Certainly a must see.


RATING
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